Website Redesign: Has it affected your SE Ranking

[dante_casablancas]

Hello all,

Our company currently is in the midst of redesigning our website to help better our conversions and to target a new demographic. I just wanted to pose a question to the people who have done this before. Has it affected your SE placement? We are currently ranked in the first page for most of our important keywords. Has there been any instances that people have experienced here, where after they did a re-vamp to their website that their placement in the SE's have dropped?

I would also like to get some feedback for the people who have actually experienced the opposite, where their rank in the SEs actually climbed after the re-design.

Also what are the dangers and pitfalls to avoid, for anyone who knows, when re-designing a website that is already doing well in the Search Engines?

Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

[weslinda]

Well, a redesign should help, but if done improperly it could hurt. One thing people do when redesigning a site is to kill off all the content that used to be the reason they had achieved such good rankings in the first place.

I would be careful of a complete content and layout change, try and keep many of the same pages and information that has gotten you to the point you are at now.

You could work on simply changing layout, but ensure that you are focused on providing a well designed site, with more content than you had before, and you should be okay.

Issues can come when you completely change out the pages that can be accessed by visitors as pages are looked at individually by the engines and the new pages will take some time to get ranked.

Hopefully that helps.

[incrediblehelp]

I have done redesigns where the client lost rankings for 3-4 months and then were back on top. Then some clients saw a seamless transition. All were handle approximately the same. As weslinda has pointed out website redesigns can hurt or help and and it is hard to say what will happen until it is done.

One thing is for sure that you need to make sure you let the search engines know what is happening. If you are changing the page names, URL structure, file extensions, etc you need to do 301 redirects from the old pages to the new pages. This is the single most overlooked step that usually causes downtime in the SERPs.

[dante_casablancas]

Thanks incredible...

Will research on the 301 redirects.

Does keeping the site structure, hierarchy adviseable when designing a new website? I guess if the page is being renamed, then a 301 redirect will be a good solution. But do the SEs prefer you keeping the current site structre instead of overhauling it?

[incrediblehelp]

Keeping it the same or improving it is best. If you are changing the URLs you might as well organize your website so it is better for you to work within and make better sense to your end users and search engines.

Check out the concept of building around theme pyramids:

Search Engine Theme Pyramids and Google (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum10003/3060-1-10.htm)

Optimizing Web Site Themes for Search Engines (http://www.searchengineguide.com/orbidex/2002/0222_orb1.html)


Get Organized!
One of the best aspects of themes is that they'll keep your Website organized and on-topic, something that can become quite difficult as your online presence evolves and grows. A correct theming structure will help you maintain a clear delineation between the different areas of your site, and allow you to target specific keywords and keyword variations to particular sections. A themed Website should follow a structure similar to this:

* Index: Football Teams
* Second level: National League Teams
* Third Level: Different National League Team pages
* Fourth Level: Team Stats and Player pages for each team

[RegDCP]

I have done this a few times.
Before proceeding on the projects I did a thorough evaluation of the traffic patterns on the old site, took the pages with the highest volume of visits and "reframed the content" in the new theme.
In some instances the content was revised for SEO.

Old pages were kept in the navigation structure and anchor text.
Pages with very limited traffic were either discarded or used elsewhere in the navigation structure if I felt they were still relevant.

Positioning results were mostly upwards.

Reg

[obuwebco]

We re-launched obuweb.com may 1st.

With the new site came an entirely new site structure, new content, new verbiage, all new file and directory names. Even a slight reduction in number of pages. All we saved was blog content and a very old link directory.

We did 301's for every logical url. Even 301'ing an entire blog (with about 130 archived posts) from obuweb.com/blogger/ to obuweb.com/news

Net result from the 3 major SE's below.

Google: No decernable change in rankings
Yahoo: Huge increase in rankings (first page for "web design" from around page 18, moved up 40 spots to #1 for "professional web design")
MSN: Slight fall, maybe average drop of 3 spots per term.

Overall the re-design helped our SE traffic considerably. Best of luck.

[mpprh]

Hi

I updated the site and changed URL at the same time (around April 2005). I had had a holding page for the new site (with a little content and links to the old site) for about 6 months. I incorporated about 90% of the old content in the new site. I left the old site in situ for a while. You can see the difference here :

http://web.archive.org/web/20050208033434/http://tlp.netfirms.com/

http://web.archive.org/web/20040615013924/http://www.the-languedoc-page.com/

http://www.the-languedoc-page.com

It took a few months for the new site to catch up with the old site. Then I converted the old site into redirects. I'd been working with redirecting links since day one with the new URL. The first site was a free URL, so I couldn't do more than HTML redirects.

The net result was that I used to be No3 on google.com (all languages) for my No 1 keyword. I've been No1 since November 2005 with the new URL (out of 15m - 45m references). Todays result : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rls=GGLG%2CGGLG%3A2005-24%2CGGLG%3Aen&q=languedoc&btnG=Search

A couple of points :

Google is pretty clever at working out which site is the old one. The links, and cache reports here : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rls=GGLG%2CGGLG%3A2005-24%2CGGLG%3Aen&q=tlp.netfirms.com&btnG=Search actually show results for the new site.

I moved from google PR 4 to PR 5 in the process. I think a large part of this (and the move from No3 to No1) was because the main keyword was uniquely incorporated in the URL.

I have lots of photos. Google image search was updated in the last month or so, providing lots of No1's. I'm getting good hits from this.

Wish I could sort out Yahoo & MSN search, too !

Peter

[marknc]

We redesigned our website and our ranking and position remained unchanged, actually we improved slightly on one or two keywords.
I think the key is to forget about the search engines, just write and create your site with the single purpose of reaching your target audience, stay focussed on this goal alone. When you're done, then you can review it in the light of the search engine guidelines and tweak it to fit.
Stick closely to the guidelines to start with, so for example, if they say include the same word a maximum of three times in the keyword meta-tag, then make sure you only include three and not four or five. If they say keep your h1 headlines short, keep them short. Sorry if I appear to be stating the obvious but you'd be amazed at how easy it is to overlook these small details.
We never did resubmit our site, just waited for the robots to come around, and now we enjoy first page number 1 positions on many of our keywords and phrases.
Once established you can to some extent, go beyond the limit of the guidelines but do so with caution at this time, as Google are on the warpath.
Watch for the tiny changes you can make to improve your position such as capitalising certain words or phrases, and remember, alt tags only show in Internet Explorer, not Firefox, Netscape or Opera, so use title tags as well to include important content and gain brownie points for accessibility.
Be clear about your USP and focus hard to reach your audience and the results will probably surprise you.

[RegDCP]

Excellent post marknc.
Design for your visitors while paying attention to what the serch engines want and you will get good results.
SEO in a nutshell.

Reg

[chebyrashka]

Generally I've seen increases but it depends on what your redesign involves. Adding more javascript, Flash etc improperly will probably hurt but cleaning up code, rearranging content will probably help.

I'd recommend just having some measurable goals from the redesign and aim for those.

[chebyrashka]

Oh forgot to say I worked with one company who relied heavily on their rankings and had an old creaky site, probably designed for Netscape 4. Anyways they refused to touch the code in fears it would change their rankings. But other sites evolved and got better and so they eventually lost anyways. So keep that in mind as well.

[RHunt]

Folks,

We're in the process of redesigning our website too, basically a new index page with an increased number of product pages and I'm scared! We currently have page one on google for our industries' most popular search phrases. Recently, I changed the page title...nothing serious I thought from

Casas de Ruidoso - Ruidoso, New Mexico
to
Casas de Ruidoso - Ruidoso, New Mexico cabins, condos and vacation rentals.

For our most generic search term "ruidoso" we've been bouncing around like a basketball in Google! #6 to #34 to #9 to #43 to #10 and it still continues, all over the past two weeks! If just a title change will do this, what's in store when we do something more substantive? Or did I just catch the crest of a new wave of Google changes?

Thanks! I can sympathize with dante_casablancas!


Good luck to all.

[marknc]

Personally, I think your title is a little long now and I would definitely not duplicate any words here.

[edhan]

We have done re-designing several times but sticking on the same page names plus additional ones. With design changes and slight modification of content, it seems to help further with search engines ranking. Just remember to use 301 if you are completely changing the entire structure for URL, page names, etc.

[HHI_Golf_Guy]

If you're just dumping the same content in a new layout you may see some SERP changes based upon your new navigation structure and hierarchy of pages (if that changed).

If you have new text content on your pages then you are bound to see larger changes in SERP's. Whether your rankings go up or down depend upon your on page optimization, navigation structure, and the hierarchy of pages.

Changes in your rankings are also dependant upon how quickly the search engines index all of your new pages and delete the old pages. For example, with your new design you may have a great hierarchy of pages (the pyramid) that helps build a KW theme. But if the SE only picks up one or two levels of a 6 layer pyramid you may not see a change until all of the pages are indexed.

If you're site is already doing well in the SE's you may want to keep all of your content the same as before and dump it in the new layout. Just make sure the SE's can easily navigate your internal links.

[SummitPK]

Our web site maintained a seamless high SEO Ranking on our main keywords and the same Google rank after a redesign two years ago. We kept all the keyword placements and tricks intact, but we converted everything to CSS. Keyword, Meta, and Title tags were duplicated in the revised version. Some WebPro Reviewers remarked that our revised web site looks like a Front Page product, but actually it is a Dreamweaver Product with a 1956 Ford Crown Victoria appeal. We also added ecommerce at that time.

The results: Sales shot up, Reverse links expanded. And vistors reached and maintained a new high. I think our success in not falling off the wave is due to these guiding principles: Keep the current content and offerrings intact but add and modify as needed to adjust to web customer expectations and currency; Maintain the keyword empahsis for the SEs; Upgrade to CSS and avoid depricated HTML. Build modestly on content, arrangement, and design...i.e., the rebuild should programmatically modernize the site and bring it up to speed with current user expectations but not radicalize the upgrade (e.g., with Flash or JS)and risk loosing the working SE and Ranking hooks in place. In short, if it works, tweak it, don't revamp it.

In the end, we stepped up a notch and the SEs and rankings stepped up too, a bit. Whew!

Please take a look at www.SummitPK.com -- your comments are always welcome.

[ron angel]

Hello all,

Our company currently is in the midst of redesigning our website to help better our conversions and to target a new demographic. I just wanted to pose a question to the people who have done this before. Has it affected your SE placement? We are currently ranked in the first page for most of our important keywords. Has there been any instances that people have experienced here, where after they did a re-vamp to their website that their placement in the SE's have dropped?

I would also like to get some feedback for the people who have actually experienced the opposite, where their rank in the SEs actually climbed after the re-design.

Also what are the dangers and pitfalls to avoid, for anyone who knows, when re-designing a website that is already doing well in the Search Engines?

Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Leave it alone or you will get loads of problems & take a long time to get back to where you are.
Just add the new pages with links from main page
leave the links from that page to the existing pages
exactly as they are but make them smaller in font size dimmer ect. put links to new pages with similar
text I such a way so they stand out more write things like new, click here, people will follow new links search engines will still see old content & they will follow link to new pages with meta tags with new stuff. there you are the new with the old nothing lost. after a month or so start removing links to old pages from index but leave pages after 2 months remove pages from end of tree of old pages about one page every two weeks. you have the idea. If ranking drops put pages back!
www.ssrichardmontgomery.com (http://www.ssrichardmontgomery.com)

[chrisJumbo]

We have done some redesigns. We always kept the same domain though. Each time, our rankings improved because we worked hard at not only improving structure, but also better content, titles, etc.

As others have noted, redesigns can be done and rankings improved.

[Mac 5]

I did a slight redesign by changing all of the buttons and graphics, keeping the text, metatags, html, etc. the same. Many of the graphics were even named the same name as the old graphics, so there was no change at all in the search engines.

[weslinda]

So to sum this up, it's actually quite a simple process.

1. Keep the same pages and content with a fresh look and new information added on top.

2. If you can't, then make sure to use the proper redirects to let the search engines know what you've done.

3. Make sure that any changes you make are for your customers and potential clients. Keep them and the search engines in mind, but first and foremost is your clients.

It's basically that simple. You obviously have put thought into this, so you should be just fine.

[ksawatzk]

A few years back now, I was webmaster for a large specialty sports company (which shall go unnamed) and ran the site for about 1 1/2 yrs. We beat the only other major competition in search engine rankings for all the major terms (top 3 to 10) related to their product. I also ended up in the middle of a lawsuit between them re: website issues and ended up being proved to be on the correct side, at least.

The site was very extensive, hand-coded, multiple domain names (portal pages) with gobs of references/links to glowing product reviews, pictures, testimonials, etc. When the company decided to overhaul their entire computer system, the CEO was talked into taking the website back in-house, against his judgement, with a complete overhaul. I warned the CEO that they needed to be careful with how much they deleted/changed in order to keep the search engine ranking, I even got to preview it before they went live. Lot's of slick Flash, but all links to anything previous were gone... I warned him again, but they went ahead with the changeover. (I did continue to have server access for a while, everything was deleted).

Within three weeks the CEO emailed to tell me that all their great search engine position was gone. Wanted to know if I had any suggestions. About all I could tell him was I-told-you-so, and good luck with getting it back within 6-8 months.

If you can leave previous info intact with links back to the new site layout, you might salvage a bunch of your placement.

Good luck with that!

[Mac 5]

I believe in the motto, "if it's not broke, don't fix it."
Let's start over, dante_casablancas Why are you wanting to redesign and update? I read in your original post you want to target a new demographic. Can you add pages to your existing site, change some graphics on the old site? I don't know how good your SE rankings are now, or how much money you are getting off your old site. A link to your site may help also.

If you have a good poker hand, do you want to throw it in and get 5 new cards?

[wige]

I have faced a similar situation, redesigning the web site of my company. I have experienced some rather odd things.

Three months ago, I was hired to redesign my new company's web site. The web site had been created in 2000, had not been updated since, and used very outdated eCommerce software and very limited content. The site had no noteable rank in any category.

We sell a wide variety of products. Because of this variety, I added content only for products sold in my area, leaving hundreds of pages ready for fresh content as I continue to grow the site. Because of restrictions from the web host, 301 redirects are not an option.

The first odd thing is the only page that has a pagerank is my homepage. This is also the only page that was left in the same URL from the original version. This may be related to how Google crawls the site.

The second odd thing is that ALL of the original pages are still listed by Google, even though they have been deleted from the server, and there are no pages linking to those addresses.

Finally, I mentioned that I have "filler" pages with no optimized content, ready for future development. One of these filler pages somehow got the #1 spot in Yahoo and #5 in Google for a rather competitive search term. With almost no content at all on the page.

Hopefully these issues may give you some insight into possible pitfalls and issues you may encounter.

[dante_casablancas]

I believe in the motto, "if it's not broke, don't fix it."
Let's start over, dante_casablancas Why are you wanting to redesign and update? I read in your original post you want to target a new demographic. Can you add pages to your existing site, change some graphics on the old site? I don't know how good your SE rankings are now, or how much money you are getting off your old site. A link to your site may help also.

If you have a good poker hand, do you want to throw it in and get 5 new cards?

We are introducing a new brand. The current website that we have right now is too cluttered and need to be redesigned a bit to help it be more streamlined for the users.

I will not do a total re-design of the website we are ranking very well for our keywords. I do want to streamline the design to help it with conversions and also to introduce the new brand.

Me and my team need to plan this very carefully because as we all know the SEs are very volatile. Every single post in this thread has been very helpful. A lot of you have a wealth of information. To everybody that has replied please continue and thank you. I hope to see more information regarding the subject.

[dante_casablancas]

This is an old thread...but does anybody here have any idea if the pages on your website will be affected if you change the extensions? For example from a .htm to a .asp

The homepage will still have a .html extension. Would this be a simple process of the crawlers just re-indexing the whole website? If that is the case then the .htm extension switching to a .asp should not matter.

[Mac 5]

Changing all the extensions will still break the links to all your old pages in the SE. 301's will help viewers, but the SE's will still have to re-index and may affect old rankings.

[dante_casablancas]

So the 301 redirects was more for the actual human visitors to the website? I thought it was more for the spiders.

We are not changing domain names, the home page will still be www.ourdomain.com but the extensions of the internal pages will change from .htm to .asp

Is it still a good idea to do the 301 redirects?

Wouldn't the spiders have to re-index the website anyways?

Our internal pages are coming up on the first page for some very important key words, because it is switching from .htm to .asp would the pages still have the same relevance?

[incrediblehelp]

So the 301 redirects was more for the actual human visitors to the website? I thought it was more for the spiders.

They are for BOTH.

If you change your extensions make sure you implement 301 redirects so both visitors (spiders and users ) can find their way to the new locations.

[dante_casablancas]

So the 301 redirects was more for the actual human visitors to the website? I thought it was more for the spiders.

They are for BOTH.

If you change your extensions make sure you implement 301 redirects so both visitors (spiders and users ) can find their way to the new locations.

Thanks again Incredible!

By the way, do you or anyone in here can show me a page with 301 redirects on it.

Thank you.

[Webnauts]

Sites I have redesigned had only huge success.

[seiretto]

Sites I have redesigned had only huge success.

I should bloody well hope so.... LOL

Joking apart there are some important points many forget to monitor, see item 2 listed here:
http://uk-web-hosting-why.blogspot.com/2006/11/changing-host-will-it-affect-my-google_09.html

[Webnauts]

Joking apart there are some important points many forget to monitor, see item 2 listed here:
http://uk-web-hosting-why.blogspot.com/2006/11/changing-host-will-it-affect-my-google_09.html
They are right. But there are some more factors to be considered.

[incrediblehelp]

By the way, do you or anyone in here can show me a page with 301 redirects on it.

This page:

http://www.kcrobotics.com/about-kc-robotics.htm

301 redirects ot here:

http://www.kcrobotics.com/about/about-kc-robotics.php

[Webnauts]

Well done Incrediblehelp. LOL